Nopesport

Victory in the first Park World Tour race of the season went to Dana Brozkova of the Czech Republic and Norway's Øystein Kvaal Østerbø in warm and sunny conditions in Otranto, Southern Italy.

Times in the mens race were much closer compared to the Prologue, where David Brickhill-Jones ran out an easy winner by 18 seconds ahead of Øystein Kvaal Østerbø - only 5 seconds seperated the top 3 today. This time round however it was the young Norweigan who took his first PWT victory, having made steady progress in the sprint discipline over the past 3 years of the PWT, culminating in 3rd place overall last year. As well as this he won the World Cup sprint in Dresden, took 4th in the European Championships sprint race and 6th place at WOC. Previous best results in the PWT were two 2nd places in China behind Sweden's Johan Näsman, the man he beat today by 4 seconds while prologue victor "BJ" took bronze just 0.5 of a second behind Näsman. The 2.5km course was covered by Øystein in just 12:19.6 minutes, but he put his victory down to luck and a number of mistakes made by BJ rather than his own race. Näsman too would be rueing his mistakes, without a 5 second loss at the 3rd from last control things could have been even tighter at the top. Allan Bogle finished in the top 10, taking 9th spot in a time of 12:53.4 while Mats Haldin had another off day, finishing in 17th place over a minute behind the leaders.

In the women's race it was Brozkova who took her 3rd PWT victory, 9 seconds ahead of two Lithuanians, prologue winner Ieva Sargautyte and Dainora Alsauskaite. Alsauskaite took 3rd only 0.7 seconds ahead of Finn Riina Kuuselo and Italian Michela Guizzardi who shared 4th place. Guizzardi place the best ever result for an Italian woman in the PWT. Brozkova finished 4th overall in last years series and despite 4th place in the WOC Sprint and 3rd place at the WUOC Sprint last year she has previously seen most success in classic races, JWOC Champion in 2001 as well as World Universities Champion last year. Britains Helen Bridle, after a good first couple of controls lost substantial time and finished in 11th place with a time of 17:42.8.

Women's Results & Men's Results